Press

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Jennifer Wagner

It is now easier than ever for the concrete industry to strengthen its ties to the green design community. CarbonCure has launched a free Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) calculator to help its concrete manufacturing partners easily issue self-declared EPDs. Construction professionals seeking low-carbon options are turning to CarbonCure concrete manufacturers for these critical transparency documents.

The recent evolution of the green building rating system LEED, released at GreenBuild in November 2013, adopts a life-cycle approach to sustainable developments. In the latest revision (LEED v4), emphasis is placed on measuring and reducing the environmental and health impacts of building materials. Specifically, LEED now gives points for building products that have issued HPDs or EPDs.

While HPDs disclose health impacts of building products, EPDs disclose environmental impacts associated with a building products’ life cycle, such as the carbon footprint. The process to create an EPD is often costly; currently only a handful of concrete producers have issued EPDs.

This tool generates self-declared EPDs for any concrete masonry product made with CarbonCure. Designers and developers now have access to CarbonCure’s greener concrete, as well as EPDs that disclose the product’s environmental impact and can contribute to LEED points.

CarbonCure provides both EPDs and HPDs to its growing number of manufacturing partners for concrete masonry products made with CarbonCure’s technology, at no cost. With HPDs and EPDs now available for CarbonCure products, the concrete industry is equipped to respond to the design community’s transparency demands.